Opinion: Cultural icons exit everyday life

It was a part of USA Today’s yearlong 25th anniversary celebration; the category was titled “Top 25 things that have left us.”

This list appeared in the June 24 issue under the headline “The long goodbye.” Apparently, there will be weekly Top 25 commemorative lists of various things leading up to the Sept. 15 USA Today birthday. The fascination for me was that things once so much a part of everyday life have for whatever reasons faded away.

The text of the article doesn’t indicate if the things are listed in order of importance. If so, the parting of Michael Jackson as a superstar should be ranked much closer to the top than No. 24. Jackson now lives in Bahrain.

No. 23 is transistor radios. Are we better off without them or Michael Jackson?

The exit of the Soviet Union is second on the list.

Russia didn’t go away, but the old Cold War USSR is thankfully relegated to history. It was as if the school bully met his match on the playground.

Sure, some may be sorry we lost No. 4, the typewriter, but I’m not one of them. Before computers, I filled a lot of legal pads with scribbles to be handed off to better typists. Never would I have typed something that anyone else might actually read.

No. 7, the loss of carbon paper, fits in with the typewriter as things I don’t miss. The computer keyboard makes tending to my inevitable countless erasures a piece of cake. Likewise, the computer printer means copies come without the carbon paper purple stuff on the hands.

Vinyl records come in at No. 5. It’s true that records have given way to CDs; however, not at my house. Vinyl albums are alive and well, blaring away on my stereo system, circa yesterday.

The absence of the Oldsmobile is No. 14 on the list. At one time, the Olds was my dream car. Growing up, I thought to drive an Olds would mean I had made it to the big time. I know that dropping the Oldsmobile was a business decision by General Motors to help it survive in an auto market that is far different from the days when I so coveted one.

No. 16, “American Bandstand,” which aired on TV 1950–1989, is testimony to the magnitude of music as a barometer of America’s cultural environment. It was a program that for 39 years chronicled monumental shifts in the musical tastes of American youth. Host Dick Clark, the perennial teenager, was there to introduce each new entry in a changing music scene to the studio and TV audiences. If one wanted to chart changes in American culture, video footage of American Bandstand over the years would be revealing indeed. Changes of youthful music tastes, dress, dance styles and attitudes would provide graphic insight into four generations of teens about to become adults. Technological advances have long since rendered American Bandstand obsolete; however, in its day, it was more of a force than anyone knew – except for the kids, they knew.

Another lost artifact, the afternoon newspaper, slips in at No. 22. This genre was a victim of the times. Increasing traffic made it more difficult to deliver a newspaper in afternoon rush hour traffic. Changing lifestyles also caused afternoons to be unhandy times to read the paper.

Indoor smoking, the No. 1 thing USA Today says we have said goodbye to, reflects on a major change in the American lifestyle. A scant few years ago, a majority of Americans smoked. Smoking was permitted just about everywhere. I was a one-time smoker; I don’t miss smoking, and I don’t miss smoke-filled rooms.

Space doesn’t permit mentioning all 25 things that are long gone. Besides, I’m not sure about the impact on American culture from such things as the loss of pull tabs on beverage cans (No. 17) and Checker Cabs (No. 25). I’m still steamed about the passing of the Oldsmobile.

It’s not nice to mess with nostalgia.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.